The computer market has been through a
very tough year with consumers and businesses simply not buying due
to the poor economy. This has led to some heavy losses for some in
the computer industry. The economy is slowing starting to come back
and the launch of Windows 7 is expected to drive some upgrades in the
2010.

The CPU
market grew by 23% showing that computers were shipping in larger
numbers in Q3 2009. The same quarter, Acer was able to kick
Dell out of the second place spot in the top global PC shippers
list. Dell announced its Q3 financials and outlook for Q4 this week
and while trying to be upbeat, the Q3 numbers were not great compared
to 2008.

EWeek reports that Dell saw its profits
drop 54% for the quarter compared to 2008. Net income for the
quarter was $337 million; net income in Q3 2008 was much higher at
$727 million. Despite plummeting revenue, Dell is upbeat for
Q4.

Dell CFO Brian Gladden said that the quarterly results
were "showing some encouraging signs for us, especially in our
large enterprise and SMB businesses, where we had sequential growth
for the first time in seven quarters."

Things look better
on a per category basis for Dell with its large enterprise revenue
growing 4% compared to Q2 to $3.4 billion. Revenue from small and
mid-size businesses was $3 billion, up 5% from the previous quarter,
but down 10% from the same quarter in 2008.

Dell is looking
forward to continued growth in Q4 in part thanks to expected consumer
upgrades from the launch of Windows 7. Gladden said, "We built
more backlog than normal due to [Windows 7's] late-quarter release,
and the order dynamics that we saw during the end of October."

Dell
is still continuing its aggressive cost cutting measures, which so
far have included layoffs
and plant closures. These cost cutting methods are likely to be
leveraged next year with very aggressive pricing on enterprise PCs
and servers to allow dell to aggressively gain market share according
to analysts.

Technology Business Research analyst John Spooner
said, "Despite lackluster business PC and server unit sales
numbers in its 3Q09, TBR expects Dell to leverage its recent cost
cuts … to fund aggressive PC and server pricing during the expected
corporate PC upgrade cycle in 2010. We believe Dell has been laying
the groundwork for this move for some time. In fact, it will leverage
its lower costs to provide aggressive hardware pricing to large
enterprise customers in order to win in large bid situations. At the
same time, Dell will gain the opportunity to attach additional items,
including its storage and newly acquired Dell/Perot Systems services,
with large PC and server deployments."

The cost savings
measures are expected to allow Dell to reduce the costs of its
products enough that it can win large bid contracts that it can then
turn around and bundle with services such as those provided by the
Perot Systems company that it acquired in September.

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Racism aside, americans don't want to speak to Indians when they have a problem with their PC. You need to fire some of them and hire more american workers. Yes, they would cost more money, but in the long run you'd probably get more sales because people could be more confident purchasing your product knowing they would be able to understand the support rep on the other side of the phone when they have an issue. I know outsourcing is the industry standard thing to do now, but I don't care.

This is coming from someone who did onsite Dell hardware warranty support for a few years. The number one complaint I heard from the hundreds of customers that I helped (and still help many of them since they don't want to deal with dell) is that they "couldn't understand that da*n person from India".

Exactly! I just cancelled my order with dell because of the indian people at the other end of the phone, they dont understand me, i barely understand them, even if they did understand what i asked they usually give a generic "i dont know what the hell im talking about" type answer that dosent answer the question i asked!

Also the double standards BS, some people phone up and get £75 off, others get a free monitor, a good chunk get nothing but wasted time and grief. Didnt like that much, it happens with other companies but its not as prominent as it is with dell.

I supported Dell business class workstations for about 7 years. I always got Americans on the phone. Better yet I got DCSE certified and could use FastTrack to order the replacement parts without even talking to anyone.

Support is one thing but I have always liked the quality of Dell hardware. I would have no problem purchasing a new Dell laptop online.

I have bought two Dell systems and I will never buy one again. Last time I bought a Dell PC, it was a recent Alienware. They never shipped me my PC Work Number (the special number in the Alienware folder or on the PC that allows Technical Support to find your PC). To this date, they have been unable to give me this code or find my PC and thus, have never been able to help me. Mostly because they are in fact from India, they don't know what i am talking about and the transfers and hold times were endless. This is unacceptable. I am on my own with the $3000 PC that I bought.

Dell will now lose sales from me because I will not buy for the reason stated above. Nice going Dell.

That is true... when I fixed the workstation machines I always got to speak to gold support, but that was only when I was at some business doing the repair. They always were american then.... but, the average consumer got screwed... and when the part that they sent out (to me) didn't fix the problem (a frequent occurrence), I had to sit on with the foreign support and argue with them for sometimes half an hour to get them to send the part that I knew needed to be replaced! LOL

It is easy to say invest in your (our) own country. Problem is that labor in our country is to expensive - partially due to our standard of living and partially to our laws requiring a certain level of minimum wage. (BTW - not complaining about either - just stating facts..) We can't have it both ways - if labor is cheaper overseas then companies are going to flock there to stay competitive - as they should.

Personally - as long as the customer service rep can speak fluent English (American version) then I'm ok. I think there should be some sort of language req that says something to the effect that the customer service rep has to be fluent in whatever language that person is providing customer service to.

quote: if labor is cheaper overseas then companies are going to flock there to stay competitive - as they should.

that is about the biggest reason why this country is falling apart. go ahead keep cutting jobs and send them overseas, then when they arent selling their product, from people being unemployed or underemployed (not making a decent wage)they complain the economy is bad, well that exact mentality is whats creating the poor economy...if you pay people a fair wage (more than they need just to survive barely) they will go out and spend money on new product, and services. Where else are they capable to sell their product in China or India where they make $10 a day they cant afford extra non essential goods. Americans are one of the largest group of consumers out there, along with Japan, and that corporate greed that you seem so proudly to endorse has destroyed first the people now its finally catching up to the corporations.....

and as far as them making claims that the economy is picking up due to the fact that the DOW is again over 10k, is its going to be temporary, company stocks are rising due to the reduction in work force and hasn't caught up to them yet, (Again less people working = less people spending) and the stock market WILL start to decline again after the first of the year.

best way to repair this economy is either to shut down the borders or raise import taxes and also force international companies that want to sell their products in america it must be manufactured in America !

Well... Go ahead and force all companies to manufacture here and have call centers here for all customers. Know what happens then? You end up paying $100's more for you beloved PC that you are typing on right now. - among other products.

Before you think that all jobs are being sent overseas... I work for a Chinese company that has about 2500 of us working in the US and Canada. They've made a significant investment here, and my salary indeed gets taxed by the US gov't, my state gov't, etc.

quote: Well... Go ahead and force all companies to manufacture here and have call centers here for all customers. Know what happens then? You end up paying $100's more for you beloved PC that you are typing on right now. - among other products

ive been around long enough to see the devestation the outsourcing has done to our country. Once pretty much everything was made here and we had to pay for American made product, and had no problem doing so and our country flourished.

and as far as lowering priced all i can say is BULL, ive seen companies using american labor lets say call centers and outsource their work, those companies never lowered their prices, they showed more profit and gave gave themselves outrageous raises, and a hearty pat on the back, Levi jeans once made in America, now outsourced price remained exactly the same, and i can go on and on rattling off company after company, all day your viewpont is based on company propaganda.

When we started outsourcing, the product we recieved back is substandard and even sometimes toxic.

go to home depot, grocery stores etc.they cant outsource the cashier jobs, so they replace them by self checkout, do you get a discount for using those lanes HELL NO, the comapny just profits more, just the same as outsourcing has done for ALL companies

Outsourcing is all over the place and its mutual between countries. The US govt allows outsourcing in order to gain investment avenues in countries like China and india. If you faithfully follow your anti outsourcing maxim, what will you buy then? Intel's CPU's are designed by Indians (Ronak Singhal), all the mobos are made in China and Taiwan, all laptops (except the high end ones) are made in China, MS's software developers are mostly Asians, the leading car tech and electronic tech are developed in Japan, etc etc.You only see the human factor in support issues and that's why you complain. What you don't choose to see, you don't complain about.

The advantage with outsourcing, is the Labor wages. For the corporations. In India and China, I will say, that combined those 2 countries have 2-3x the amount of college educated personal working for them. (2.5 BILLION people between the 2).

The problem with the USA with regards to this, is the abundance of low wage professionals in those countries. In India for instance, a CCIE makes 35-40k USA there.. Over here simular CCIE makes 110-125k. HIGH end CCIE's not noobs. Some people complain, the difference, yet that 40k in india = 150-175k in the level of lifestyle.

Just using this simple thought. Different economies. THE PROBLEM with that is, our country is import heavy, STOCK MARKET Dependent, Pure Profit driven. Which is good, except the simple things are popping up.1. Level of jobs available in usa that is non-exportable, is slipping very fast.2. THE USA cost of living purely devastates those 2 other countries. IE the medium house in the usa = $200k which is well beyond the capabilities of the bulk of the USA..3. The other 2 countries do not import no where near the level in which the USA imports.

When WALMART is the #1 company on the planet, with the bulk of the items in the store from china.. This says alot. Companies are complaining that their sales are down, that home sales are in a rut, that car sales are flat..

YET GM / Chrysler are getting there due.. They transported car manufacturing to mexico/canada/china= YET expect americans to keep buying cars??? NOT GONNA HAPPEN...Vicious cycle, that is slowly closing.. Other than car builders, The USA has no other MAJOR Manufacture Industry.. More so service, YET how much service needs to be serviced???

I still believe to this day, that NAFTA, and FREETRADE was the downfall to this country.. When i was a kid, i remember when the deficit at 20-30 billion was insane.. now we are at 10Trillion and counting.. WTF..

I actually dislike Dell because I think most of their products are cheap junk these days either that or their quality assurance teams are terrible at their jobs.

I used to run an IT shop that was largely dells a few years back, all dell servers mostly dell workstations until we started getting HPs.

I'm talking about 7 years ago...but I know we purchased the premium support and at least with that you spoke with English speaking agents/techs -- we had absolutely no problem at all understanding them.